During a stellar 30-year career as a boxing manager, Frank Maloney was secretly fighting his own personal battle outside the ring.

The flamboyant promoter – known for his Union Flag suit – longed to become a woman but was determined that nobody in the notoriously macho sport should know about it.

But one Christmas his torment became so ­unbearable he tried to end it all with a dangerous mixture of booze and prescription pills.

Father-of-three Frank, who is now living as a woman named Kellie, hit rock bottom when his marriage collapsed due to his transsexual turmoil.

Kellie, 61, said: “It got to a point where I just couldn’t cope any longer. I couldn’t go on and I had to end it.

“I had always believed that suicide was the coward’s way out but my life was being torn apart.”

Kellie, who once managed Lennox Lewis to the world heavyweight crown, yesterday received an overwhelming wave of public support for her ­courageous decision to come out after 15 months of living like a recluse.

(Image: Ian Walton/ALLSPORT)

But Kellie told how crippling guilt over leading a secret double life drove a wedge between Frank and his wife and forced them to separate.

She said: “It was emotional. I knew I had come to the end of the road. I was living on my own and my daughter was carrying me through it.

“I wouldn’t tell her what was wrong, but she kept asking. I was spending a lot of time abroad because I felt safe there.

“I would wander around outside dressed as a woman and it felt for the first time that I was being the real me. I was conscious of people staring at me but it never happened.”

Kellie said at this point she was “living a double life” and decided to move out of the marital home to another place further down the road.

She added: “I went home in 2012 after deciding that I was going try and make a go of it with my marriage. I kept asking myself if I could lock everything away inside my head.

“By now I had a full wardrobe and was living between the two genders. People who didn’t know me saw Kellie and if I had to do some ­business I’d be Frank.”

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The Sunday Mirror revealed yesterday how Kellie believed she has been trapped in the wrong body since childhood and was now receiving corrective treatment. But she admitted the ­struggles with her identity caused battles with drink, depression and drugs.

She has also been receiving ­counselling and therapy.

And Kellie told how she kept her turmoil in the shadows over fears of a backlash from the boxing fraternity.

But the last attempt to make the marriage work failed.

Kellie said: “I had made a conscious decision to burn all the female clothes and go home and try to work it out with my wife, if she would have it. I went home that Christmas and it was an absolute disaster.

“So much so, that if I’m honest, I tried to kill myself that Christmas. I was swallowing pills like there was no tomorrow.

“I was downing heart pills which I had been prescribed and aspirins while drinking champagne.

“I just wanted to block it all out.

“I couldn’t let anyone see me taking the pills, so I went out to walk the dogs with the intention of ending it.

“I’d always been told if you committed suicide in the house you lived in it meant you had something against the person you shared that house with and I had nothing against my wife. There was no chance of the marriage surviving.

“Coming back that Christmas was the worst thing I could have done.

“Trying to make it up as a couple again was stupid because it was over. The only escape was to end it.”

Kellie said as the misery consumed her, she escaped the house with the intention of killing herself.

She went on: “I had been starting to take the pills in the house and when I started to feel groggy I went out with more pills in my pocket to take.

“I was walking the two dogs and I started staggering. I lost balance and collapsed into some bushes.

“Thankfully I was found by a couple of people who recognised me as Frank Maloney and rang an ambulance.

“ I could feel my dogs licking my face as I sensed where I was.

“I look back and I wonder why I tried to do it. I would have hurt my children terribly. I refused to get in the ­ambulance and dragged myself back to the house and into the car.

“I don’t know how I did it but I drove to my daughter’s and collapsed again.”

The following day, as her life was being torn apart, Kellie confessed all to her eldest daughter.

She said: “She stayed with me all night and I told her the whole truth the following day. She was shocked but in a way relieved to finally find out why I was the way I was.

“She thought I was terminally ill and had not told them. I told her and it all came flooding out.

“All those years I’d hidden the truth and it was now out in the open.”